Posts tagged OmarInfante at FanHouse

As we all sit around and wait for the blockbuster deals involving Johan Santana and Miguel Cabrera to take place, there have been a couple of smaller trades going down the last few days.

Just this morning the Cubs sent Will Ohman and recently acquired Omar Infante to the Atlanta Braves for Jose Ascanio.

Ascanio is a hard-throwing 22-year old righthander with limited big league experience. He has a mid-90's fastball, and in his 16 innings with Atlanta out of the bullpen last season, he was 1-1 with a 5.06 ERA and 13 strikeouts.

Anybody who's familiar with the Cubs knew that Will Ohman wouldn't be back with the team this season after spending most of 2007 parked deep in Lou Piniella's doghouse. After being demoted to the minors in August, Ohman said that the team knew of his sore shoulder that was responsible for his performance, while the club said they had no idea he was injured.

Ohman later admitted he was mistaken lied about it.

It's the second time Omar Infante has been traded this winter, as he was just acquired by the Cubs from the Tigers in the deal for Jacque Jones.

Yesterday the Chicago Cubs made a trade with the Detroit Tigers that sent Jacque Jones back to the AL Central, and brought Omar Infante to the north side of Chicago. It was the second trade the Cubs had made with Detroit in the last three months, as they acquired Craig Monroe from Detroit in August.

Well apparently there's a "One Former Tiger At A Time" rule with the Cubs, because they've now shipped Monroe to the Minnesota Twins. In return the Cubs will be getting the infamous player to be named later.

As far as Monroe's concerned, this is a good thing for him. He never found much playing time with the Cubs, and even though the team has said goodbye to both Jacque Jones and Cliff Floyd in recent days, it didn't look like he'd get much playing time next season either.

There are more rumors out there that the Cubs are currently talking to Tampa Bay about a deal that would bring Carl Crawford to Chicago for prospects. Whether or not those talks are going to become a reality remains to be seen, but it's obvious the Cubs are looking to make more changes to their outfield.

In Minnesota, Monroe will have the chance to compete with Jason Kubel for playing time in the Twins outfield. Which there should be plenty of to go around should Torii Hunter sign elsewhere this offseason.

The Tigers shored up their outfield on Monday following the acquisition of Jacque Jones from the Cubs in exchange for Omar Infante. Nothing is official, but it seems likely that Jones will see the bulk of the duties in left field platoon. From Jon Paul Morosi of the Detroit Free Press:

"I'll play that by ear," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said during a telephone interview Monday afternoon, when asked if he envisioned a platoon between Jones and [Marcus] Thames. "We face so many right-handers that Jacque is going to play a lot, but I can't forget about Marcus."

Jones' splits weren't all that pronounced last season (.295 vs. lefties; .283 vs. righties), but that's likely a fluke due to sample size. Over his career, he's hit just .233 against lefties and .294 against righties. He did suffer a huge power drought last season, going from 27 home runs in 2006 to just five in 2007, but the Tigers are probably hoping that a return to the American League will get him back on track.

In any case, Infante was expendable, especially with Edgar Renteria in the fold. And the Cubs are throwing in some money to defray the cost of Jones' $5.5 million salary, so this was pretty much too good to pass up. Jones will be a free agent at the end of the year, but barring the unexpected he'll likely just be a one-year fix until uber-prospect Cameron Maybin proves that he's ready for regular duty in the big show.